Tide on the clock for possible appeal

Alabama has 12 days to decide if it will appeal last week’s NCAA Committee on Infractions ruling that stripped 21 football victories and added three years of probation for widespread problems in the university’s textbook distribution program.

Committee chairman Paul Dee praised Alabama’s handling of the investigation. He noted the committee found Alabama guilty of “failure to monitor” — not the more ominous “lack of institutional control.”

Alabama’s swift and proactive actions likely spared scholarship reductions, too. This was a self-reported case. That fact probably played a role in keeping sanctions from being worse.

University president Dr. Robert Witt must decide if those positives would merit the time and expense of appealing the ruling. They don’t change the fact that more than 200 student-athletes in 16 sports received impermissible benefits, even though most of those amounted to textbooks. The fact that only 22 of those 200 were found to be “intentional violators” doesn’t change the fact that Alabama’s own investigation uncovered the violations.

“The University of Alabama failed to monitor its textbook distribution program,” Witt said during his comments Thursday.

It’s tough to see Witt winning an appeal when the facts of the case aren’t in dispute — particularly since the sanctions could have been much worse.

These violations occurred while the school was in a “repeat violator” window. Alabama has been in front of the Committee on Infractions four times since 1995,
three times for football problems.

With the extension of probation to June 10, 2012 and the additional two years of the repeat violator window to June 10, 2014, Alabama will have stayed under
some sort of NCAA cloud for 16 ½ of 19 years, from 1995 to 2014 – so the Tide isn’t No. 1 in the nation in recruiting only.

And yet, the future is so promising. Nick Saban has won a national championship at LSU and could coach just about wherever he wants. He is at Alabama.

The football stadium is about to expand to more than 100,000.

The football team returns nine starters on defense from a team that had an undefeated regular season a year ago.

And Saban’s relentless recruiting never seems to stop.

So who can stop Alabama? Florida can. So can Georgia. And Tennessee. And Auburn. Ole Miss, too. They are all worthy adversaries. But the biggest
obstacle in Alabama’s way is Alabama.

Many of its problems have been self-inflicted — including the latest run-in with the Committee on Infractions.

The NCAA may have given Alabama a reprieve last week. But the university clearly has a bull’s-eye on its back, too, with this extended probation.

Saban is undeniably a control freak. Called “the most powerful coach in sports” by Forbes, I have no doubt he is strong enough to keep his coaches, his
players, his program in line.

But is he strong enough to keep rogue boosters, or overzealous fans eager to see Bama back on top — or, for conspiracy theorists, people who want to see
Alabama slammed hard — in check?

For that matter, is anyone?